The recent awareness that our energy sources may no longer be viewed as limitless has been brought home to most Americans by dramatic increases in home energy costs. Aside from the more obvious cost of heating one's home, the largest home energy cost for most Americans is the cost of heating hot water for personal use and for laundry purposes.
The greatest amount of hot water used in the average home is that used for showering. The average shower uses about 10 gallons of hot water per minute. Since the cost of operating a hot water heater is directly proportional to the amount of hot water used, and even relatively short showers can use great quantities of hot water, the cost of showering daily has become quite expensive. This is particularly true in metropolitan areas of our country, where the energy costs are the highest.
An additional cost involved in showering is the cost in terms of our water resources, a cost which is felt more intensely in the arid Southwest. While the average adult drinks less than a gallon of water a day, the same average adult will use many gallons of water daily in showering. In fact, during periods of drought, governmental authorities frequently request people to shower every other day, rather than daily.
Both increased energy utilization efficiency and improved water conservation may be obtained by the simple step of reducing the amount of hot water used in showering. While the obvious solution is to minimize the amount of time spent in the shower, a more desirable solution is to reduce the amount of water flowing through the shower head.
It is recognized by the shower head industry that people prefer to have an intense spray generated from the shower head; this has led to the successful marketing of a number of shower heads producing a variety of intense sprays, many of these heads which are in 1982 priced in the $25-$35 price range. Recently, several manufacturers have introduced specialized shower heads which are designed to use less water than the older type of shower heads. The problem with these new, lower-volume shower heads is that they will operate properly only when full pressure is supplied to the shower head. If the pressure is lowered, the flow of water from the shower head is no longer as intense, resulting in reduced enjoyment by the person showering.
Since these shower heads will not work satisfactorily with lower pressure, the user may not turn down the pressure to the shower head in order to save water without sacrificing the stimulating spray of the shower head. Most users will choose personal satisfaction over energy conservation, and will operate their showers at full pressure.
A number of manufacturers market valves for use with shower heads to control the flow of water to the shower head without adjusting the main valves of the shower and varying the temperature of the water supplied to the shower head. Some of these valves are even built into shower heads. These valves are mostly of two types--the pushbutton type, where the user pushes a cylindrical button on one side of the valve to stop the flow of water, and on the other side of the valve to resume the full flow of water; and the rotating type valve, where the user turns a handle on the side of the valve fixture to control the flow of water. These valves have a number of significant disadvantages.
The first disadvantage of these valves is that they are extremely hard to use when the shower user is shampooing and is unable to open his eyes because of a full head of lather. He must then grope for the small handle of the valve in order to turn the water off or on.
A second disadvantage of valves for showerheads is that many of them do not provide a continuously variable control over the amount of water used. In other words, the user must decide between a full flow of water, and an extremely diminished flow of water which is not sufficient to provide a brisk spray from the shower head. With this type of valve, the user will generally keep the valve in its wide-open position, thus using an inordinately large amount of hot water.
Finally, since most of these valves are able to completely stop the flow of water to the shower head, there is a possibility that the user may leave the shower with the water turned on at the main valves, and turned off only at the secondary valve located near the shower head. This results in the pipe between the main valves and the shower head being left in a pressurized condition for a long period of time. Since this pipe was not intended to be left in such a pressurized condition for any period of time, there is a strong possibility that leaks in the pipe may develop. Such leaks, since they are within the wall of the house or apartment, may result in substantial damage to the structure.